NOW IN THEATERS
A ZEITGEIST FILMS RELEASE
Synopsis:
In A Space Program, internationally acclaimed artist Tom Sachs takes us on an intricately handmade journey to the red planet, providing audiences with an intimate, first person look into his studio and methods. The film is both a piece of art in its own right and a recording of Sachs’ historic piece, Space Program 2.0: MARS, which opened at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012.
For Space Program 2.0: MARS, Sachs and his team built an entire space program from scratch. They were guided by the philosophy of bricolage: creating and constructing from available yet limited resources. They ultimately sent two female astronauts to Mars in search of the answer to humankind’s ultimate question... are we alone?
Directed by Van Neistat,A Space Program is a captivating introduction to Sachs’ work for the uninitiated, and required viewing for his longtime fans.
Tom Sachs:
Tom Sachs (b.1966 ,New York) Artist.
The genre defying mixed media sculptures, often recreations of modern icons using everyday materials, show all of the work that goes into producing an object - a reversal of modernization’s trend towards products with cleaner, simpler, and more perfect edges. Sachs’s sculptures are conspicuously handmade; lovingly cobbled together from plywood, resin, steel, and ceramic. The scars and imperfections in the sculptures tell the story of how it came into being and remove it from the realm of miraculous conception. His studio team of ten, functions like a teaching hospital or cult, that worships plywood and an ethos of transparency. Known as an “Artist’s artist” Sachs’ work is loved by children and widely imitated by young artists in search of their own voice. His film collaborations with director Van Neistat (since 2001) have served to represent the aspects of the sculptures that exist in time. View them all at tenbullets.com
Sachs’ SPACE PROGRAM first launched in 2007 with a mission to the moon at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2012 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, Sachs and his team ventured further than any human before by taking his SPACE PROGRAM to Mars in search of life beyond Earth. By using all of their resources and man power, they embark on a journey that, through their labor and commitment, becomes as real as any other NASA mission. By realizing details to an extreme degree the experience becomes authentic.
Sachs’ work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Austin (2015), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2009), Fondazione Prada, Milan (2006), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin and SITE Santa Fe (1999). Sachs lives and works in New York.
Van Neistat:
Van Neistat is a filmmaker who lives in New York City. Neistat is the director of several Tom Sachs short films including Ten Bullets. A Space Program is his first feature film.
Stills:
